


Drift

by maybethrice



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Drift Compatibility, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Jaeger Pilots, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 00:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7130909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybethrice/pseuds/maybethrice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his drift partner died years before, Jon never intended to set foot in a Jaeger again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drift

_You won’t know unless you try._

A metallic screeching noise follows Jon when he storms back to the quarterdeck, but the sound of unoiled hinges drowns out the noise of his bootheels on the metal floor and the pounding rush of blood in his ears. It can’t drown out the words, though. When the hatch on his quarters slams shut, he presses both palms against the cold metal and tries to breathe through choking panic rising like a waterline in his chest.

He shouldn’t have come back to the Shatterdome. After Ygritte died in the drift, leaving him drifting with the abyss of death and certain of the futility of it all, he’d wanted to just go home, back to the central continent, and be a civilian. But some shred of duty was left lodged in his chest and, though he’d never set foot in a Jaeger again, Jon thought he could still help. Everyone knew what he was, what had happened to him. No one asked him to rejoin the program as a pilot. 

No one, until Sansa.

 _You won’t know unless you try._

The problem was that Jon _did_ know. Jaeger pilots were known for an impetuous nature. Most of them had family killed in the first attacks along the coast. It was a good, tragic reason to join, but all of Jon’s family was long dead before the kaiju turned up. Half of the family that had taken him in were killed in the coastal rampage that devastated Vancouver, and the other half scattered across the continent. Robb became a Jaeger pilot and died fighting a Category III off the coast of Chile. The last Jon had heard of Arya, she’d gone east to pilot in the Atlantic campaign, but that was years ago. 

Jon hadn’t even known that Sansa was in the Jaeger program until she was transferred to Shatterdome with a drift-compatible pair of pilots from the south. He’d been so relieved to see at least one familiar face after so long that he hadn’t noticed how much she’d changed at first. Certainly it was a change that she was a willing pilot candidate, but fifteen years with the kaiju attacks could change anyone. 

Whenever she was free of training, Sansa kept Jon company while he worked on the systems upgrades for Oathkeeper. She hadn’t found a drift compatible partner yet, and so they took their meals together, spent their liberty together, and steadily grew closer than they’d ever been when they were younger. Being around Sansa was like breaking the surface of a stormy ocean and taking a much-needed breath of clean air.

And, because he was impetuous and foolish and all the things Jaeger pilots were, Jon couldn’t help ruining a good thing.

Sansa was no longer a dreaming girl, but a sharply intelligent woman, talented and whole and unblemished by the harsh tragedy that had transformed Jon. It wasn’t a surprise that he might fall in love with her, that he’d ask her permission before cradling her soft cheek in his scarred palm and kissing her. 

No, the surprise was the hot spark that Jon knew too well, and Sansa not at all. But she knew what it was as soon as it passed between them, could feel that Jon was the drift partner she hadn’t been able to find among any of the other pilot trainees. _Jon_ knew it, too, even as he pretended that he hadn’t felt it. But where others had let it alone, let Jon linger on the tragedy that broke him some three years before, Sansa couldn’t let it be.

Everyone knew that Starks were exceptionally talented Jaeger pilots and powerful partners in the drift, and it was also known that they burned themselves out too fast. Sansa wanted to be a pilot as much as she’d ever wanted anything in her life, even if it meant another dead Stark pilot like her father and her brother. Jon didn’t think he could handle losing another person he’d called family, another woman he’d loved. Another drift partner.

 _You won’t know unless you try,_ Sansa said to him the morning she asked for a test drift.

There was no avoiding it. There are precious few pilots left in the program after years of fighting a losing war, and after Lightbringer went down somewhere off the Alaskan coast there’s been a renewed push to bring trainees up into active duty. Jon received the order that morning and he’d gone for the test, hoping that it would fail, or that it would break down and he’d be permanently moved off the list of inactive pilots.

Jon’s compatibility with Ygritte had been a point of envy among some of the other pilots in the program. He’d never been able to explain what it was that worked about it, it was just that they had just enough tension to pull each other in the right direction. Enough trust that there was never a moment they were out of sync. Jon hadn’t wanted to replace it and he certainly didn’t expect to find something like it again in another partner.

He doesn’t. 

The drift with Sansa is beautiful, but it’s not the same as with Ygritte. Twined around the hollow scream from Ygritte sharply cut off to black nothing is the shattered numbness of holding her mother’s body in a lush, green forest outside Vancouver. The day Jon came to the Starks, with all of his grief and fear and her excited trepidation, is set alongside the day Jon was accepted to the Jaeger program and the day Sansa fired a gun for the first time to keep the handsy intendant of the camp in Calgary from taking the last shred of dignity left to her. 

A mish-mash of memories, his and hers. That’s their drift. There is no tension between the two of them. All the jagged edges of their grief, the hopeless years overlaying near-forgotten happiness, are exposed in the drift. Sansa could choose to examine any of a thousand memories, to accept or reject Jon if she chooses, but he knows that it won’t happen that way.

Jon can feel it even now, back in his quarters with his forehead pressed against the cold metal. He ripped himself from the drift, unable to keep Sansa from the panic hammering through his blood now before they were detached. What she must think of him now that she’s seen it all, knows him for the coward he is: so frightened by the singular glimpse of death that he’s seen that all his daring is drained away to nothing.

A soft knock at the door interrupts that spiral of thought. It’s better to get it over with, Jon resolves, opening the door for her with his eyes fixed on the patch of floor beside her boots. Sansa steps wordlessly inside his room and stands beside his cot until the door is closed and latched. 

“I tried,” Jon attempts, but everything’s different now. He can’t hide anything from her, and he can’t keep his eyes from hers in hope he’ll know what she’s thinking now. When he looks up and her arrestingly blue eyes fall on his his heart thumps with the same hope shining on her face.

“It worked, Jon,” she answers in a small, kind voice and Jon feels stupid for doubting her. Sansa, whose heart bled for every broken thing beyond repair when she was a girl, wouldn’t leave him alone to wallow now that they’ve been in the drift together.

She pulls him down to sit on the edge of his cot together, her arm curled around his while he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and waits for the panic to pass. It worked. They’re drift-compatible. The world needs them to do this. 

“I’m scared to death,” he admits, as if saying it aloud will make that feeling go away when it’s been lodged in his chest for all these years, between all his other fears and horrors.

Sansa’s responsive hum is thoughtful, and her only answer at first is a tender squeeze of the hand she’s taken into hers. Then she rests her head on his shoulder and says, “I’m frightened, too.”

“I joined the Jaeger program so that other people might live. So no one else would have to die. I thought I might die. I didn’t think...” He takes a slow, shaking breath, and rests his cheek on her hair, smelling engine oil and flowers. His heartbeat slows back to normal the longer they sit there with the truth hanging between them. “I can’t lose another drift partner, Sansa.” 

Sansa’s head jerks up at that, but instead of pulling away, she holds Jon tighter to her. “We might die,” she agrees gently. 

She understands now that she has the memory of Ygritte’s death haunting her, too. But Jon understands now too. The loneliness of being the only known survivor in her family. The years of searching that brought her to Brienne, the Jaeger program, and then to him. In all the world, they’re all that’s left for the other.

“But if we do, I swear that we’ll go together.”

 _You won’t know unless you try._

Jon presses his forehead to hers, forcing himself to hold her stare. “All right,” he sighs. “Let’s give it a try.”


End file.
